1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for web applications. Still more particularly, the present invention is directed to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for providing an updateable offline version of a web-application.
2. Description of the Related Art
A web server is a computing device connected to a network that serves web content to users. Web content may include web pages and applications. An application server is a server that is wholly or partially dedicated to running one or more applications. A user on a remote client device may execute an application on a web server and/or an application server by connecting to the network on which the server is located and requesting execution of the application.
An application is computer software that uses the resources of a computing device to perform a task or service for a user. When an application located on a server, such as a web server or an application server, is accessible to a user located on a remote client device by connecting to the server via a network connection, the application may be referred to as an online application.
A user cannot execute or access an online application in the absence of a connection to a network on which the server is located. In addition, if the connection to the network between the client device and server device fails before execution of the application is complete, the user will be unable to continue using the online application until the network connection is re-established. In addition, even after the network connection is re-established, any results obtained during execution of the online application prior to loss of the network connection may be lost if the results data was not properly saved or backed up to data storage location accessible to the user.
In other words, currently available web browsers and servers do not permit a user to continue execution of an online application after a network connection to the server hosting the online application is lost. Thus, the loss of a network connection during execution of an online application may result in lost time, lost work and data, as well as inconvenience and frustration for users who must wait for the network connection to be re-established before any task associated with the online application can continue.